


un hommage

by orphan_account



Series: all of our magics [1]
Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M, pre and post laurens/kinloch breakup, unapologetic use of the french language for aesthetic purpouses(tm)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 04:31:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13473756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Heavy downstrokes and light upturns, ornaments and curves adding details to the page and ink.Or, the creation and the completion of a tribute.





	un hommage

**Author's Note:**

> i swear lafayette's story is coming soon but inspiration struck and so this happened

The night’s darkness was too deep for their footsteps to be heard. 

The echoes were absorbed into the shadows as they ran with two light paces and at top speed. They ran together, with purpose, the hands that weren’t carrying brown-papered packages holding the other’s hand. 

“Here,” said the first to the second, and the two slowed to a stop. They looked up at a wall that loomed above them, standing in the typically busy town square. 

Oh, but this evening was anything but typical.

In the awning’s shadows (the lanterns that casted them having been caught mid-flicker) stood figures frozen mid-step. Chests frozen mid-breath, a single couple, their mouths pressed together, frozen as they shared a breath.

The second one laughed when he saw the couple, and he tossed his package on the ground in order to share his own breath with the first.

It had taken months of practice to get to this point. The research had been its own monster, and practicing had been hours of sitting cross legged with a candle between them, waiting for the silhouettes that moved with the wick’s flame to pause on the wall. The silence of endless concentration. The frustration of hours of fruitless efforts. The warmth on their chests when they pressed their heads together over the candle.

Eventually, though, the second pulled away, and opened the package, revealing a quill, parchment, and ink. He handed all of these over to the first, face shining. “You have the better handwriting,” he reasoned. Curiosity, however, still shined on his face. “What will you write?”

The first just took the quill, dipped it in the new ink, and held it over the page. His words would be revealed in a few moments. Almost as if on a whim, he placed the second’s right hand on the hand holding the quill, and so they wrote as one, chanting in Latin as they did.

Heavy downstrokes and light upturns, ornaments and curves adding details to the page and ink. But as the page’s center was decorated with the first’s artful serifs, so too was the looming wall.

It was for them. The two of them deserved their own monument, but they wouldn’t get it from waiting for someone else to sculpt it out.

So  _ they _ decided to carve something out for  _ themselves. _

It was the second one who moved both of their intertwined hands from the paper, gazing up with an almost predatory smile to what would become their legacy. They were hunters, the entire damn world was their prey. 

They were smarter than any other pair, they would be more successful than any other pair. But they didn’t have brute force on their side. Both were slight of figure, and so they packed the packages once more, preferring flight over fight. Their hands danced over each other, sparks dancing. It had really just been a matter of time before were entangled in each other’s arms once more, sharing their breath as that frozen couple was, until the world around them thawed.

Wincing, the first made to distance himself, afraid, but caught sight of the second’s eyes and laughed. How could he have ever thought to looked away? Even as everything around them came back to life, they let themselves fall into each other until a scandalized shout was directed towards them. 

They were young, but not stupid enough to stay for long.

As they took hands once more, letting their footsteps be taken into the darkness, they fled away from their monument. 

The one that read:

**_Un hommage_ **

 

* * *

 

“I’m confused,” said the second.

“That’s not a surprise,” the first replied with a teasing voice. 

“Our monument.  _ L’hommage.” _

“What about it?”

“You left it without punctuation.”

“I’m aware. It was an intentional action.”

“It wasn’t apparent to me that you were so lax with grammar.”

“I should hope so. Grammar’s a friend of mine, I wouldn’t want it to feel slighted.”

“Well, then why did you leave it incorrect?”

“I don’t think of it as incorrect,” the first admitted, a bit amused. “Merely incomplete. It’s a hope of mine we’ll have more words to share.”

* * *

 

His hands, shaking. Cheeks flushing, eyebrows furrowed, and walls punched through. It wasn’t  _ right,  _ this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. They were supposed to be eternal; they were supposed to take over the world together. 

But this letter, to attempt to prove something so spiritually diametric to fact, to prove something so diametric to the first’s own reality, it stung more than words could imagine to explain.

_ ‘Mediocrity.’ _ The first scoffed despite himself.

It was a mystery how the second could have ever reached this conclusion, but it was insane, against all reason, ghastly, and astonishing. 

And, most importantly, it was the last stop before the end of the road.

However, the first had learned something from the second, and that was to take what you wanted, to be in control of how that road ended- if not to be  _ driving _ the damn carriage so near its doom. 

Slowly, he raised from his desk, his lonely desk, without so much as a word of thought but to put a certain paper in his coat’s pocket.

He walked to the door. He paced down the stairs. He jogged into the alleyway that served as a shortcut, and by the time the tears were falling freely from his face as he pushed himself past his endurance, he was running.

Face contorted in grief, the first found himself remembering the face of his father. The expression that haunted that man’s face, when looking at him. Disappointment, or anger, or regret- hell, any mixture of the three was probably correct at any given time.

There was a burst of rage, of potent  _ unjust _ that welled in the first’s heart that was so heavy that he tripped on his feet and fell to his knees. With it, he screamed, anguished and pained so badly that it hurt his chest.

When he looked up, time was frozen still.

It shouldn’t have been possible, the first knew. To freeze time, a group was needed. Preferably four, but he and- well, they’d done it well enough with just two. But the spell had been unstable and probably dangerous as all hell and it had taken them months. There had always been beliefs that the world’s magic had a bit of sentience to it, but rumors of spells being casted without an incantation, they were all limited to kings and emperors.

The first was no king. He was no ruler. If he was truly special enough as to freeze the world without a partner, though, then what did that make him? Why would the world’s magic, such a primordial force, ever take interest in the likes of  _ him? _ Was there some favor he didn’t know he earned, or a gift he didn’t know he had?

And then, that was the moment that the first looked into his memories and realized that the prevalent expression that had etched itself  so permanently into his father’s face. 

It had been fear, hadn’t it?

The tutors brought from around the world, before being sent away. How harshly he’d been scolded for every minor inconvenience, with obedience being attempted to be drilled into him at each and every turn and curve. 

How powerful could he be, if only he dedicated himself to the studies of magic? If only his father hadn’t instructed for a chiefly theoretical study. If only he was strong enough to resist that instruction. 

But this was not the time for reflection. No, not at all.

With a chin held high even as tears continued to stream down his cheeks, the first made his way to the looming wall. He felt lonelier in the broad daylight, but took out the parchment he’d placed in his coat’s pocket. On it, in an elegant but over-the-top hand, the first had written with the second, _ ‘Un hommage.’ _

It would be until the end of time or until the wall fell that the words faded away. The spell was cast not on the brick and stone, but on the very wall, itself, so that no matter how many coats of paint attempted to blot it out, no matter what posters were plastered on top of it, the words would always be visible.

So he wrote.

**_Un hommage pour mon Ambition, Kinloch._ **

And, clutching his chest as he choked out wet sobs because  _ how could he have betrayed what I stand like this,  _ Laurens, still frozen in time, began composing a proper letter on a seperate sheet of paper.

_ He will know this is for him, but no one else shall, and forever will his spirit scream in my ear for this.  _

Let it.

The street was dead in the daylight for another hour, and by the time that the birds flew once more, Laurens had disappeared from the site of their monument, a completed letter in his hand and a (finally) completed sentence left on their wall. 

He somehow understood that they would never see each other’s faces again.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so that was written at midnight in an hour and then i spent another three hours (spread out over like a week) editing, and honestly i'm not sure if this is fully salvageable since i was reaaaally sleep deprived when i wrote this. sorry for any confusion, but please point anything out that might need fixing.  
> Another thing- from how far I am currently, it looks like the lafayette story will be very long. There are a few options, though. First, I can upload chapter-by-chapter, something i haven't done in over four years. Or, I can begin uploading something from another fic i have stowed away in google docs (hamilton except its on mars). Well, maybe i can upload them alternating, but I only have eight of the martian fic's chapters written so far. I'm very indesicive about the whole thing, so please leave a comment!  
> PS, there are several references (including the 'completed' tribute) to laurens' june 16 1776 letter to kinloch. the full text can be found [here](http://john-laurens.tumblr.com/post/162588516838/my-ambition-kinloch-is-to-live-under-a-republican) (even though once upon a time i couldnt find the transcript and tortured my study hall for three days straight as i tried to read the word 'education' as 'precaution.' oops.)


End file.
